I did some work in an 80 year old apartment building on Friday. My customer had me remove all the old phone and cable wiring throughout the place; his security vendor ran new wire through the building. I came across several of these old intercoms in the apartments, and he let me take one of them. The only writing on it is 'Connecticut Tel and Elec. Co'
I hooked it up to my phone line at home to see if it would draw DT, and all it did was busy out the line. Unfortunately the one I got is missing the earpiece which is on a cord.

Jeff, 1st remember, "Do No Harm". Anyhow, it'll need at least a network, other wise the mic and earpiece (once you get one) will 'lockup' from excessive current flow.

I'm gonna take a picture of the back of the unit and post it.

you might be better off posting this under Antique phones

Its a "antique " intercom

Could one of the mods move it to Antique Phones?

Sorry, it's not a telephone, so it won't work on a POTS line.

It's an intercom, and uses low voltage DC for talk, and low voltage AC to make the buzzers buzz.

Generally, the lobby instrument and any apartment instrument that goes off-hook are in series.

Signalling is over a third lead, via a button/buzzer arrangement.

The receiver units crop up from time to time on the ATCA or TCI forums.

You might try contacting a company who maintains these intercom systems, for advice and spares. There are many in NYC, and I would assume that they are also in other large cities.

These guys might be able to help:

LeeDan

Interestingly enough, I was at temple tonight, we had a service in the temple's old building from 1910 which is now a church. What did I see on the wall, but an abandoned Connecticut Telephone and Electric intercom...this looked like a master intercom, it had a dozen or so buttons labeled with different rooms on it. Pretty cool! The bell was partially removed and the speaker was blanked off.

Jeff -

While digging around in the dreaded basement I found one of those units. It's not exactly the same - it's surface mount, not recessed and has the bell on top and the receiver on the side. It's by "Loeffler" and not Connecticut, but I'm sure they're identical inside.

As Arthur said - DC to talk, AC to signal. I took this one off the wall of a Doctor's office on Central Park West. He had an office on the ground floor of an apartment building and this was the intercom to the front door.

He hated the look of this unit. He thought it made the office look old and frumpy. I was installing a 1A2 system and I tested the unit. I replaced it with a new 554 set with a 10 or 18v 1A2 system buzzer (I forget which). It worked fine.

At one time I had it hooked up as an "answer only" extension in the house. It worked then (33 years ago) and probably still does. If you want it, it's yours for postage.

If I can get it together I'll send you a picture.


Sam

Sam, in the continuing saga entitled "Sam & Art...separated at birth" I will tell you that I made lots-o-money going around to Dr's offices on the Upper Left Side wiring lobby intercom circuits into a spare appearance on 1A2 and later, EKTS.

This allowed the secretary and others in the office to answer lobby ICM calls from any station, and not have to run over to the ugly old lobby ICM station which was often in an inconvenient spot.

I used a 24 Vac relay to switch the ICM buzzer lead to GEN, and thence onto the Ring side of a 400D card, which operated the CMB ckt and the line appearance flashing lamp; and a 401A KTU, capacitively coupled to the ICM "T&R" of the ICM so the stations could have a balanced talk pair. (Often the lobby ICM was unbalanced.)

To do it right, it required two slots, so many times, I used a 259 KTU to get the extra slots, or replaced a shoebox with a 501.

Arthur -

Very slick. Actually very, very slick.

I could see where you could make a few shekels off that gig.

Actually, wasn't there a KTU that converted an ICM circuit's 4 wires to a 2 Wire OPX? Maybe I'm confused


While you're puzzling that one - I have a very slightly related story (It really has very little to do with your story but it's still a good story - and it is slightly related).

I once wired an intercom extension off a PAX board onto a spare position on a 565 set. Nothing special, except that it was the President of Bond's Clothing Stores office. We supplied the PAX, ITT supplied the PBX and we had dueling phones in his office. To make life easier for him I added the line to the K-Plan, but he still wanted to keep the CV. All went well till I went to convert the PAX 500 set to A lead control. That's when I found that the Blk/Yel pair in the mounting cord was wired to a radio transmitter in the set (the pair was being used as an antenna).

Someone was bugging his office.

What a bad day I had with Security and the Police.

I was tied up all day. My boss kept saying: "Why did you say anything? You should have just shut up and closed the phone."

Sam

Sam, there was a SanBar KTU that allowed a two-way radio (half duplex) circuit to be interfaced to a PU key on a 1A2 set. A converted signal key on the telset became the PTT of the radio. Or a G5 handset could be installed. Maybe that's what you were thinking of.

The 425 KTU (that succeeded the 225, with wire spring relays) superinposed GRD/GEN on a pair, under control of a SIG lead to allow an OPX off a dial ICM.

Bugging? legal and illegal? I worked in Harlem from 1970 to 1989. I saw every possible example.

It would take a book to tell all the stories.